by Jillian Neal
“I’d take you to bed, baby. Take you to my bed and sate my cock on your tight, wet pussy until I ruined you. But that’s only half of the things I want.” He leaned in. His tongue swirled around my clit as he coaxed my lips apart.
An anguished sound of my own pure need purred from my mouth. One single brain cell kept up the fight. “I want to know the rest,” was half-lost in my own eager moan. Despite my declaration, I laced my fingers through his thick brown hair and pressed his face between my legs.
Another swirl of his tongue preceded him coaxing my clit into his mouth to suckle. My body went boneless with satisfaction. My hips undulated to the rhythm of his licks. He lifted his face much to my dismay. His smirk couldn’t quite disguise the raw hunger in his eyes. “I don’t think that’s what you really want right now, sweetness. Look how wet you are for my mouth. My baby’s so needy for my tongue she can’t even stay still for me. Let me make it feel better.” Before I could agree, he went back to work.
His teeth scraped gently down my folds. I was soaked. The friction set me on fire. That lone brain cell who’d tried to hold out waved a white flag. I gave in to the persuasion of his mouth. As weak and wet as he made me, when he drew my clit back into his mouth and sucked in earnest all of the fragmented pieces of my world aligned and then shattered into tiny, unrecognizable pieces as I groaned out his name.
I shook. My vision clouded with my own ecstasy. My thighs clamped tight against his stubbled jaw, but he wouldn’t allow me to close him out. My legs were going to be chaffed. Somehow that only turned me on more.
He knew me. Knew the rhythm and friction I needed. Knew exactly how to make me come. I tensed so hard my muscles protested as the rapid spasms began. The sweetest agony. He lifted his head only when he’d wrung me dry. My own cream glistened on his lips. He licked them like a prisoner devouring the final vestiges of his last meal.
“The other things I want are only slightly more honorable than the ones I already told you. I want to put my body between you and anything on this entire damned planet that might ever hurt you. I want to be able to give you every single thing you want, every single moment of every single day. I want to fix it so that I’m the only man who ever gets to taste you like that. I want to know I’m the only man who’s ever moved inside of you. The only man who makes you moan that way and knows how you tighten up with every thrust. I want to put you in my bed and piss a fucking circle around you so there is no question who you belong to. There. That’s what I want.”
Wow. The sheer amount of honesty he’d just laid at my feet had to have cost him most everything. “Will you look at me, please?” I spoke as soon as the orgasm released me from its clutches. His eyes lifted to mine. “I need you to understand that I want both sides of you. I want most everything you just said you needed.” Maybe not the literally marking his territory confession, but I got it none the less. “You are capable of giving me every single thing I will ever want or need because you unto yourself are both of those things.”
He managed a haggard nod, but I hadn’t convinced him, not yet. “Guess we should get back to the Mad Hatter’s Bachelor Auction, huh?” He’d come up with a reason for us to leave much too quickly but I knew I’d dismantled a little of his armor. I had a week to rescue him from the parts that still had him ensnared.
I wrinkled my nose. “Want to get the chef to bring us some wings here first? They’re almost as good as yours.”
“Bullshit. Nobody’s wings are as good as mine. You take that back,” he ordered as he rose to his feet, towering over me, and then let me cuddle into him when he settled on the couch.
“I said almost.” With my own teasing grin planted firmly on my face, I reached to the phone on the table behind the sofa and dialed the chef assigned to the suites.
22
Griff
An admittedly decent platter of wings and shame swirled in my gut when I guided Hannah back into the peckers-on-parade ballroom. The band had moved on from top twenty current hits to playing It’s Raining Men because of course. I still couldn’t believe even half of what I’d admitted to her. Not that I could’ve stopped myself. With her, I disintegrated into nothing more than guilt and dedication.
I’d zipped my baby back up into that dress that was hot enough to fry my few remaining brain-cells. She’d removed the wayward clip from her hair and let her long blonde waves fall all over her shoulders. I’d just fucked both of us into oblivion, and I was already harder than the barrel on a sniper’s long-gun.
Watson circled nearby before he spotted us by the door. Narrowing his eyes and shaking his head, he made his approach. I knew what was coming and braced for impact.
Hannah narrowed those killer baby blue eyes. She’d clearly seen his knowing smirk as well. Great.
“Did you go somewhere?” Mike huffed. “I didn’t see you at the dinner.”
“Army not teach you to feed yourself or something, Watson?” I countered.
“How did you got a woman like her to go back to your suite ten minutes after you met her?” He spoke through his clenched teeth.
“You know what really is funny?” Hannah snapped. I couldn’t help but grin. “The fact that you somehow think speaking through your teeth is going to render me deaf.”
The guy needed to see about having a speed bump installed between his brain and his mouth. “Sorry,” he offered. “Not like you didn’t disappear though.”
“Yeah, well we were enjoying a few minutes of not being here,” I huffed.
“You’re lucky. This whole thing is strange, and I’m an intelligence analyst so I would know.”
“Intelligence, huh? That explains so much.” I rolled my eyes. He hadn’t noticed that his fly was open, so he lived on as the poster child of every joke ever made about military intelligence. “Strange how exactly?” This whole thing was more than a little shady, but I was curious what Watson had picked up on.
“That chick…” he gestured to the woman who’d asked about my scar, “…had never heard of Homefront Heroes. Apparently, Ms. Mallory invited her to attend this afternoon. Her grandfather is some Vegas hotelier or something.”
“So, she’s like Paris Hilton?” Hannah’s head cocked to the side and she screwed her mouth up into her thoughtful pose. My gaze zeroed in on her lips with scope-honed precision. She did the sexy mouth thing when she sketched as well, only she had more peace about her when she was designing.
“I guess.” Watson shrugged.
“It’s weird that none of the other board members are here. I’ve done tons of charity events for Homefront and the board always attends,” Hannah continued.
I logged all of the information being thrown my way.
Before I could take a stab at what was actually going on, Betsy Ross was swaying before me and shaking what appeared to be a pom-pom made of knitting yarn. The next time the band declared that it was raining men she beat out the hallelujah back and forth with what had to have been her replacement hips. Not that I was one to judge since I was sporting a replacement as well.
“Hope you two are up for gettin’ down and dirty.” She pointed to me and Watson in turn. “Vicky gave me one of her spare pills for now and one for later. I’m ready to be bent over the barrel, so I can salute all fifty states.” She punctuated the last three words with more alarming hip gyrations. “God. Bless. America!” This time she slapped her own ass with each word.
Hannah’s eyes were the size of hand grenades as she stared up at me in horror. “Wow,” she mouthed.
“Yeah, I’m going to have to bleach my own retinas,” I concluded. But the constant twitch of the woman’s eyes was actually more concerning than what we’d just witnessed.
“Da’fuck?” Watson gasped.
“See, swearing helps. Keeps you limber so you can duck the bullshit raining from the ceiling right this moment.”
Watson actually stared up at the ceiling, so we still had some work to do but then he summed, “Those women are nuts.”
“Certifia
ble with an entire finished basement and three-car garage of what-the-fuck-is-actually-happening.”
A slight pop and muffled scratch of a microphone drew everyone’s attention to the dance floor.
Megan Mallory cleared her throat twice. “All right, ladies, it’s time to get your final bids in. Gentlemen, why don’t you line up here on the dance floor for a final viewing.”
“Final viewing,” I spat. “I’m either at a wake or this is the part of some kind of ritual sacrifice just before they start stringing people up on spits.”
“At least it’s almost over,” Hannah pointed out hopefully. “I promise I will make all of this up to you.”
“You naked all week. That’s the only thing that could possibly make this better.”
The slight dimple in her right cheek made an appearance as she gave me a sexy grin. “But I brought so much lingerie.”
I considered for a moment. “Fine. But those are your only two options. Naked or lace. Or maybe my Cubs jersey.”
She fucking saluted me with a husky, “Yes, sir.” My cock saluted her right back. Weak bastard that he was. Damned woman would always be able to get away with murder with me, and she knew it. “I love you, Griff.”
“I love you too, baby.” I winked at her. “I’m more amused than angry. I swear.”
“I know.”
I brushed a kiss on her cheek and begrudgingly followed Watson to the parade of the ritual sacrifice.
“Okay, so you two have to already know each other, right? I mean you just said you love her,” he leapt as soon as he decided Hannah was out of earshot. “And I’m pretty sure her hair was up when she got here. It’s not now.”
“Nah, I profess my love to any random blonde with legs like that. Don’t you?”
“You’re hilarious.”
“Agreed. Also check your fly.”
He quickly fixed his zipper situation. “Seriously, if you’re together why are you in a bachelor auction?”
It was always cute when regulars tried to interrogate Special Forces. “Here’s the thing. We’re actually here on a mission with Pentagon Intelligence. Betsy Ross’s sister over there.” I pointed to one of the sparkler sisters. “She’s a foreign national, and we suspect she’s smuggling sensitive CIA information she found on an encrypted copy of Zelda from an old Nintendo that was labeled: CIA Black Operations—Do not steal.”
“Wow! Are you serious? You’re CIA?”
“No, dumbass. Shut up and strut.” I shoved him forward as the guy ahead of us fell into line on the stage. If there was one thing all members of the military could do, it was march in a straight line.
I’d survived the Trek, as we lovingly refer to it. Three days alone in the Uwharrie National Forest hiking miles from point to point with only a map, a compass, and an eighty-pound rucksack. There was no talking, no one but point sitters that spoke only your next coordinates to you, and sure as hell no Hannah waiting on me at the end. I could walk around a fucking dance floor for two minutes even if I was currently being cat-called by the original backup singers for Tony Bennet. I needed to get the fuck over myself.
Spying a cute brunette who’d come to stand near Hannah and who was grinning at Watson, I nudged him. “Looks like somebody’s interested.”
“She’s cute right? We danced a few times. Name’s Bethany. She’s an anesthesiologist. Says she wants to get wild this week in Vegas.”
Apparently Vegas just loosened everyone’s inhibitions including my own. “I gather you’re the soldier to help her do just that.”
He chuckled. “I will definitely be feeling no pain.”
“Look at that, my boy. Now that was a decent joke. I knew you had it in you.”
A half hour later, Ms. Mallory was finally reading the winners’ names.
Slowly but surely, cautious men were paired up with eager women and began discussing hanging out for a week in Vegas. Mathis and a couple of the guys he’d introduced when I’d arrived were displaying every sign of nerves. “Be cool, man. It’s just a thing,” I offered them a phrase The Sevens frequently told each other.
“Says the guy who already knows who he’s spending the week with. Those crazy old women are still here,” Mathis spoke under his breath.
“There are still lots of guys here too,” I pointed out.
Ms. Mallory continued working through the stack of winning bids. Bethany, Watson’s hopeful anesthesiologist, edged toward him. His grin expanded, and I genuinely hoped they had a great week. Tired of all of the pretenses, however, I had my arm wrapped around Hannah. I was entirely out of fucks to give about someone knowing she’d arranged for me to be here. I figured five minutes for Ms. Mallory to get the rest of the winners read. Another two for Hannah to write a check and then I could escort her back to my suite and make up for taking her like I’d been deployed for all of my adult life and had finally gotten leave.
Ms. Mallory continued to flip through bids. Bidding on humans would never be okay in my book. I’d seen too much, rescued too many, and hadn’t been able to rescue enough. Still, I kept my mouth shut.
“The winning bidder for Sergeant Ryder Mathis is…Ms. Victoria Rutherford.”
The elderly woman strutted up to the stage waving a stack of hundred-dollar bills. I cringed. Poor guy was going to have his hands full. Ms. Mallory continued before I could offer him some helpful info.
“The winning bidder for Lieutenant Mike Watson is…also Victoria Rutherford.”
“What the fuck?” leapt out of my mouth.
“Wait. There can’t be two guys for one girl,” Hannah protested. “This isn’t some kind of reverse Beach Boy’s song. If she’s the highest bidder for both of them then one of them has to go to the second highest.” God, I loved that woman. On top of being the world’s most perfect human specimen her media sarc was always on point.
Ms. Mallory went on despite our protests. “The winning bidder for Captain Seth Seeger is also Victoria Rutherford.”
The men standing around me with mouths hanging open all shot me pleading looks as Victoria and her two sequin-drowned friends went about pinching them on the ass.
“Okay, back the fuck up,” I demanded. “How are you allowing this? They didn’t know they were signing up for an orgy at the nursing home.”
“Sergeant Haywood, you’re Ms. Rutherford’s final win.”
“What?” Hannah shrieked. “I bid ten thousand dollars on him!”
Now, I was not only dumbfounded by the fact that this scam of a fundraiser was allowing one winner for multiple men, but what the actual hell was she thinking? “Babe. My God. Are you serious with that number right now? She actually bid more than that?” I gestured to Betsy Ross’s wealthy dick-dealer.
“She has eight dead husbands, honey.” The woman who’d offered me a knitted dick scarf, fanned cash in Hannah’s face, and I fought not to vomit. “Now get out of my way. My friends and I have a big night planned.”
Victoria Rutherford, however, appeared to be seething. What the actual hell was going on? Suspicion I had no choice but to acknowledge slithered over my skin when I noted wine-guy waiting in the wings of the ballroom for someone.
Stunned to the point of numbness, I huffed, “You wrote out ten fucking pages of rules for this bogus fundraiser yet you didn’t come up with one that would prevent some kind of sick geriatric sword dueling contest?” I demanded of Megan Mallory. She ignored me. Never a good idea. “You better come up with an answer, and you better do it now.”
Panic broadcast from her features. Oh, yeah, there was something extremely fucky about this whole thing, and I was going to prove it. “Nothing about this fundraiser is bogus. Nothing. Do you hear me? All the checks are to be made out to Homefront Heroes. I’ll see you all here for the dinner tomorrow. Please enjoy your stay in Vegas.” With that, she grabbed several stacks of papers, her briefcase, and a few file folders. Then she stormed out of the ballroom.
Watson was busy begging his anesthesiologist to still spend the week with him despit
e every disturbing thing that had just happened.
I was a fucking weapons sergeant. They told me where to shoot, and I blew whatever it was straight to hell. Thinking quick on his feet and getting us out of bad situations was Chris and T-Byrd’s job. When the perverted knitter grabbed a handful of my ass and twisted, however, I decided I better come up with a plan.
When she went back for a second grab, realization slammed through me. Her fingers palmed my wallet, that time, not my ass. Wine guy’s credit card reader centered in my mind. He didn’t have a uniform or a name tag because he didn’t actually work for The Obelisk. I would’ve bet the insane amount of money Hannah had bid on me that his credit card reader also had a skimmer attachment. So, that’s what this was about.
Never slap a woman. Never slap a woman. Never slap a woman. Besides she’d probably like it. I repeated the mantra in my head. “Never pinch me again. Ever,” I growled.
There was something rotten in the Happy Days retirement village. I had to figure out exactly what they were up to, how they were doing this, and what parts wine-guy and Megan Mallory played in it all. I had one week to reveal their underbellies.
“I cannot believe this,” Hannah fumed. “How…just how?”
“Listen to me, this week, you and me, we’re still doing all the things you wanted to do. You got that. Nothing has changed. Not a single damned thing. But I need you to keep MacBeth’s sequined-witches distracted for a minute.”
“Okay,” she readily agreed.
“Watson,” I bellowed. “Get your ass over here.”
He seemed to have placated Bethany, so he joined our ranks. Our winning bidders looked none too pleased when we huddled up. “Seegar, you’re a Captain? That’s what she said right? And you, Mathis, didn’t you tell me this afternoon you’re a Staff Sergeant?”
“Yeah, I’m a Staff Sergeant.”
“Did you tell them you’re Airborne?”
“Yeah. They asked what I did in the military.” Concern plagued his eyes.
“Figured that as well.”